1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to a battery-capacity management device capable of determining an available capacity of a battery depending upon the state of the battery.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, electric vehicles, such as golf carts, have been proposed in which the electric vehicle is provided with a battery-capacity management device that controls a charge capacity to an available capacity (i.e., capacity at a fully-charged condition), which available capacity has been obtained through a predetermined computation (see JP-A-2001-128385, for example). Such a battery-capacity management device (i.e., a battery management device) was featured on an electric-vehicle power system of a power-assisted bicycle. The battery management device was capable of altering when charging would be discontinued based upon a state of the battery. More specifically, the battery-capacity management device changed the condition when charging would be discontinued based on an available capacity. The available capacity was any one of: a value of a discharged-for-running capacity, which is a capacity discharged to cause a vehicle to run until a battery voltage drops to a preset available-capacity-determining voltage value; a discharged-for-refresh capacity which is a capacity discharged to cause the battery voltage to drop to a preset voltage value for refresh discharge; and a total of these values.